Alone
by VinterNatt
Summary: Oneshot. Tristan always separated himself from his fellow knights. He was always alone.


**Disclaimer: **I don't own King Arthur or the Knights,

**Author's note: **This was at first a school assignment, and it was supposed to be a short-story with the title "Alone". The first thing that came to my mind was Tristan, and I started writing. All I've done now is translate it to English and make a few changes, like putting in Tristan's name and such. Please review.

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**Alone**

You can be alone even if you're surrounded by people. People you've lived with for the last fifteen years.

Even after fifteen years none of them understood him. But he didn't want it any other way. He liked it that way. He was always the one who was alone when they were on missions. He was the one who rode first and scouted for the enemy. He was the one who killed the first before riding back to warn his commander, Arthur Castus, and his brothers-in-arms that the enemy was nearby.

He knew that Arthur, and the other knights if he was to be completely honest, had tried to understand him all the years they'd known each other, but at times even they expressed anger and annoyance at his behavior. Several times he'd been accused of enjoying killing and blood. He never answered this; he just turned and walked away. They were correct, so what was it to say?

People were afraid of him, and sometimes even the other knights feared him, perhaps Galahad more than the others. Fear was a weapon, a fact he had known quite young, and he didn't just use it against his enemies. It was quite efficient way of keeping the people, both Romans and Britons that lived at the fort, out of his way. People stayed away from him out of fear, or because they knew better than to approach him. He was happy as long as they didn't go anywhere near him. Perhaps happy was the wrong word. Who knew what that meant with this man? Satisfied was much better. Few had ever seen him smile, and if he ever did smile it never lasted longer than a second before his face was again expressionless.

He rarely said anything without being spoken to first, and even then it was rarely anything more than to report to Arthur after he'd been out scouting or on a solo mission. Sometimes he could come with a sarcastic comment or a simple observation when some of the others were arguing about who was right and who wasn't. If he ever did that the others stopped arguing about that particular matter because they knew he was right, although they would soon find another subject to disagree upon. The dark eyes never missed even the smallest detail, which was some of the reason why he was such an excellent scout. Sometimes it even scared the others how much knowledge he had. Knowledge about themselves and thing others were not supposed to know about, or things that had happened so long ago that everyone else but he had forgotten.

He wasn't lonely even if he was like this. He cared for the other knights in his own way, even as far as to consider them friends and brothers, even if they didn't know and he'd never said anything. He was alone, but he wasn't lonely. Loneliness and being alone was two very different things the way he saw it.

Now he was on his back on the ground and looking at the sky, watching the black smoke, and he wondered if there was anything he could have done differently. Years with practice had taught him to ignore the pain and he never thought about death being any more than the end of life. This time he couldn't ignore the pain. His vision just became more and more unclear.

Tristan had never feared death. It had always been something that would come to him sooner or later, and when it came he would welcome it with open arms. Why, then, did he feel this unexplainable desire to live? Why did he feel like there were things he should have done that he never had? Death wasn't like he'd predicted. The intense pain he had foreseen, but he'd always thought his death would be quick, and not letting him lay here like this with thoughts he'd never had before.

He'd never taken the time to think about his life. He'd never reflected over the choices he'd taken, or why he'd become such an efficient killer. Now, when it all soon would be over, he thought. He asked himself questions, things he didn't know the answer to, but things he'd like to know.

He fought to keep his eyes open, but he knew this was a battle he was going to lose. He lay amidst enemies in the middle of the battlefield, and never before had he been this lonely. For some reason he couldn't explain, he hoped he would be missed, although that thought was pushed from his mind almost before it was finished. He knew no one would miss him. He opened his eyes one last time and saw a hawk on the sky, his hawk. She circled round and round above him, but all the time she kept herself a bit towards the east.

Towards Sarmatia. Towards freedom.

His eyes closed and he drew his last breath, and then his body went still. But Tristan's last thought was that perhaps he wasn't so alone after all.


End file.
